Ibrahim Rugova

Kosovo's ethnic Albanians pleaded Wednesday for NATO intervention to stop what they called a Serbian campaign of forced expulsions from their independence-seeking province. An additional 2,000 villagers poured across the border into Albania to escape the Serbian onslaught.

Atenuous peace is settling over Yugoslavia. The country is in the hands of a democratically elected president, and moderates prevailed in last Saturday's municipal elections in Kosovo. But a dispute over the legal status of the province, now under the control of the United Nations, is simmering just below the surface. The Kosovars want independence from Yugoslavia, but Belgrade insists Kosovo is and always will be a part of Serbia. The two sides will have to settle their dispute themselves.

U.N. mediator Cyrus R. Vance plans to resign as co-chairman of the Balkan peace talks once the New York negotiations on Bosnia-Herzegovina are completed, diplomats said Tuesday. His spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said the former U.S. secretary of state had always said he did not intend to stay forever but would "not leave the talks at a crucial moment if that could be done in a reasonable time frame."

Gunmen wounded an aide to a leader of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians in a possible attempt to derail any settlement for the troubled province short of independence from Serbia. Serbia, meanwhile, continued to shrug off NATO threats of an armed strike if violence in Kosovo is not halted and claimed its latest offensive in the southern province has ended with success.

Riot policemen swinging batons and firing tear gas on Wednesday dispersed thousands of ethnic Albanians awaiting a U.S. congressional delegation so that they could complain about what they call human rights abuses. About 10,000 people chanting, "Freedom! Freedom!" and "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" gathered in front of a downtown hotel where the delegation of seven senators was expected to hold talks with leaders of the ethnic Albanian majority in the southern Kosovo province.

Yugoslavia's new president huddled Thursday with his security commanders on the Kosovo border, where ethnic Albanian rebels have launched a major offensive, triggering Western concerns of another Balkan flash point. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic, but it has been under international control since last year, and many residents want full independence.

Ethnic Albanians fired on a Serbian police patrol Sunday in central Kosovo, Serbian sources said. The shooting added to the upsurge in violence threatening the province's fragile cease-fire. The Serbian Media Center said ethnic Albanian separatists attacked along the province's main east-west road about 25 miles west of Pristina, the provincial capital. Police fired back, wounding two of the attackers. Those and four others were captured, the center said.

Fatmir Limaj, a senior officer of the Kosovo Albanian rebels, was acquitted Wednesday of charges of torturing and murdering ethnic Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians at a prison camp during the 1998-99 war. A second defendant, Isak Musliu, also was acquitted, but a third, Haradin Balaj, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for executing nine prisoners in the woods in July 1998. All three had pleaded innocent on all charges at the U.N.'s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.

Slobodan Milosevic argued in court Monday with the president of Kosovo over the root cause of the Kosovo war: Was it an attempt to create a Greater Albania, or a struggle for freedom by the province's ethnic Albanian majority. The former Yugoslav president also argued that he once saved the life of the newly elected Kosovo leader, Ibrahim Rugova, whom he said was threatened by ethnic Albanian rivals--a claim that Rugova disputed.